The floor of the Moscow Metro with a sweet candy coating. It's irreverent, cogent, and produced by contributers who are Eurasian area specialists.
Just because the Kremlin denied it does not make us wrong.

Feb 9, 2010

Like the friend after a party who just won't leave, this could really get awkward.

Ukrainskaya Pravda reports that Tymoshenko has privately vowed to contest the election results, wants a third round of voting and will “never recognize the legitimacy of Yanukovich’s victory.”

Uh-oh.

Whispers like that even forced Joao Soares over at the OSCE to step in front of a microphone: "It is now time for the country's political leaders to listen to the people's verdict and make sure that the transition of power is peaceful and constructive."

And just to be safe, team Yanukovich triggered a flash mob (wearing blue trash bags?) in front of the Central Election Commission to “celebrate their candidate's victory.”

Gotta hand it to the man, he learns fast. But if anyone starts calling this the Blue Revolution, his media people will have earned their pay.

8 comments:

If you don't read Ukrainian, the Kyiv Post might be a better source of info than ABC News.

Although Yulka has not held any press conferences, she has already decided to mount legal challenges.

The Kyiv Post previously reported that the Interior Ministry had seized a number of pens used for marking ballots - except that there was disappearing ink. An old trick in Ukraine - disappearing ink.

Today, the Kyiv Post reports that there is a challenge to the voting in 1,000 out of the 30,000 polling stations in Ukraine.

Among the tricks - busing of a large number of elderly people (who were bribed), and, for some mysterious reason, more votes counted than people who actually voted (in other words, stuffing the ballot box).

One has to pay close attention in Ukraine to pick up on all the scams and shenanigans.

The international observers may have bought off the Paul Manafort-Phil Griffin mamby-pamby platitudes fed to Yanukovych.

"Never give up, never give in" (from the comedy science fiction movie - what the heck was the name of that movie - with Tim Allen and Sam Rockwell and Sigourney Weaver and the excellent actor who played the villain in "Die Hard") looks like it may be gaining traction.

A member of the Central Election Commission states that there is a basis to do a recount in certain voting districts.

The leader of Self-Defense Yury Lutsenko says Viktor Yanukovych was able to gain victory in the presidential election thanks to the inaction of Prosecutor General’s Office and the betrayal of Viktor Yushchenko, the NUNS Feb. 12 website release runs. The PGO did little to stop the flood of falsifications, Lutsenko says. The interior ministry received 1,057 complaints on vote-rigging in the first round and 785 in the runoff. As of today, merely 7 investigations have been opened by the PGO after the interior ministry submitted to it 381 cases about serious election fraud, Lutsenko stresses. Due to the PGO inaction, courts rulings banning home-voting and inclusion of voters in rosters on the voting day were ignored. As a result, some 2 million Ukrainians voted at home in violation of the law, with 500,000 voters included in voters’ lists on the day of voting, the former minister revealed. Moreover, the PGO, threatening sanctions against police officers, didn’t let the police prevent the law violations, notably, stop illegal bussing of voters to polling stations. Another factor which helped Viktor Yanukovych to win the election is Yushchenko’s betrayal who “actually worked in the interests of Yanukovych,” Lutsenko said